#Susannah flood age how to
#Susannah flood age series

Finn, making her Broadway debut, is a talent to watch. When she chastises herself in the third person - “You ruin everything, Joan! They’re all laughing at you!” - she morphs into everybody’s strange in-law. Impressively getting more laughs than the “Will and Grace” star is the hilarious Crystal Finn as Joan, Billy’s neurotic college girlfriend and later wife. The actors who play rebellious Madeline and Billy, Susannah Flood and Christopher Livingston, storm in with tremendous humor and energy and cut through the weird, stuffy, “Philadelphia Story” act Messing is doing. The actress overdoes it playing a teen, and Haidle writes partly in metaphysical mumbo-jumbo that can be hit-and-miss.įor instance, her second line is, “In the career of my soul, how many times have I turned from wonder?” That’s a bit heady for a show’s first 30 seconds.īut “Birthday Candles,” which is set in one kitchen, shakes off the pretentiousness when Ernestine enters middle age and has children of her own.

#Susannah flood age how to

The play begins when Ernestine is 17, and is learning how to make a birthday cake with her mother - a tradition she will repeat every single year. Debra Messing, center, plays 90 years of one woman’s life in “Birthday Candles” on Broadway. That all too truthful observation about aging makes you want to run out and call grandma. The parties start out big and boisterous, and by the end of the sequence, no one is visiting her house anymore.

#Susannah flood age series

During one scene, we race through a series of her birthday celebrations in her eighties and nineties over a matter of seconds. What really packs a punch, though, are her smaller losses. Deaths, cheating and health scares are all weathered with Midwestern steeliness that hides immense pain. The name of Ernestine’s hometown, Grand Rapids, describes her rocky, unpredictable road well.Īfter every victory for Ernestine (Debra Messing) - an invitation to prom, the birth of a child, the starting of a new business - a crushing blow soon follows.

Of course, when you condense nine decades into an hour and a half, both bliss and tragedy arrive faster than spam emails on a Monday. 90 minutes, At the American Airlines Theatre, 227 W 42nd Street.